Now, the Union information minister of information and broadcasting has put a figure to the advertising blitz: Rs 7 crore in all; Rs 4.79 crore on Rajiv’s and Rs 2.46 crore on Indira’s.

The I&B ministry’s computation, which obviously includes other non-Delhi and non-English papers, does not take into account the death anniversaries of the two, or the birth and death anniversaries of Jawaharlal Nehru. In all, 393 pages of advertising were published on the six anniversaries, on the pages of 12 newspapers this year.

“A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that on May 21, 2010, perhaps Rs 60 or 70 crore were spent by the taxpayer — without his and her consent — on praising Rajiv Gandhi. Since the practice has been in place since 2005, the aggregate expenditure to date on this account is probably in excess of Rs 300 crore.”

3 Comments

All this is fine, but what about massive advertising campaigns by some of the state governments? The Hindu
[Chennai edition] the other day carried four pages of advertising, on its news pages, sponsored by the Rajasthan government listing its ‘achievements’. What is interesting about this ad is that the whole text is in Hindi! What purpose does it serve, releasing a Hindi language ad to an English language newspaper? There are also instances of ads in English released to Indian language newspapers. This is usually done by government departments/organisations.

And akin to Narendra Modi’s decision to spend 1200+ crore on a statue of the original iron man of india ….

FYI: For those who don’t know how much newspapers depend on government ads –

The DAVP (Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity) annual report (2010-11) states that they alone released 12,522 newspapers ads. Here’s some excerpt from the report that emphasises how much they do for the newspaper industry:

“The [advertising] eligibility criteria has been reduced to 18 months from 36 months.”